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JORDAN FARMS 

AN EPIC IN HOMESPUN 



JORDAN FARMS 



AN EPIC IN HOMESPUN 



By 
FREDERICK E. PIERCE 

Author of " The World That God Destroyed, 
and Other Poems" 




NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT 

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

MDCCCCXVI 









&*\< 



Copyright, 1916 
By Yale University Press 



First published, October, 1916 




OCT 23 1916 



CI.A445297 



TO THE UNKNOWN RELATIVES OF 
NEW ENGLAND'S GREAT MEN 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Prelude. The Village Cemetery .... 1 
Part One. The Trail of the Waster 

A. What I Learned from Henry Jor- 

dan's Neighbors 5 

B. What I Learned from Mrs. Ormond 

(formerly Hester Dane) ... 9 

C. What I Learned from Judge Wey- 

burne 20 

Part Two. The Builder Behind the Waster 

D. W T hat I Learned from Professor Mil- 

ner 37 

E. What I Learned from Marshall Jor- 

dan 48 

F. Nunc Dimittis — Being What I Found 

Among Henry Jordan's Papers 
and What Dreams I Dreamed over 
Them 66 



JORDAN FARMS 

AN EPIC IN HOMESPUN 



PRELUDE 
THE VILLAGE CEMETERY 

Let him who loves a stern and rural tale, 
Told simply of stern, simple lives, give ear, 
Crouched on the grass of this old burial-ground, 
Where many an hour the butterflies and I 
Watched day unheeded glide to evening. Here 
Meet past and present; each memorial stone 
Links dead and living, makes us heirs of time's 
Great human treasure trove. A voice around 
Goes up as out of Dante's world of dead, 
Old love and hate and noble deeds unknown. 

In these two graves lie kinsmen, dust by dust. 
One woman loved them both, one rood of ground 
Shall hold their bones till time forget its count; 
Yet Congo's heat and Greenland's frozen world 
Were not more sundered than their lives and souls. 
And I, who never saw them, hearing long 
In sad rehearsal tales that haunt the tomb, 
Mused near their graves in twilight's mellowing 

beam, 
Or drowsy noontide, till my thoughts communed 
With them, or what they were. Then, curious 

grown, 



3 JORDAN FARMS 

From all remaining records and the talk 

Of aged folk I strove to build anew 

The lives that were, the changing characters, 

The men who walked these fields and now are not. 

As erst in Endor, round the spell they rise 
Of witch and Saul, of playmate, friend, and foe. 
Dead feet are on the grass of other years; 
Old deeds are done; old words from echo's tomb 
Reverberate, hollow sounding, false or true, 
Such dim half-truths as buried lives allow. 
Even while I write my models melt and change; 
The old New England like the gray Old Year 
Dies on the stroke of twelve; and at the door 
His red-cheeked opposite brings in the new. 
And I, who saw the old days fading, tell 
What future readers may but find in tombs. 

Count not my story sad; for many a time 
Are Hope's apostles they who walk in tears 
Life's darkest nook to find joy even there. 
I lead through night, but night with rising stars. 



PART ONE 

THE TRAIL OF THE WASTER 

From the confessionals I hear arise 
Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies. 

Longfellow's Divina Commedia. 

Dante, who loved well because he hated, 
Hated wickedness that hinders loving. 

Browning's One Word More. 



A. WHAT I LEARNED FROM HENRY 
JORDAN'S NEIGHBORS 

The hills roll down to plain, the plain to knolls, 
The knolls in turn to pool and swampy swale, 
White flash of fall, and homes far off and few. 
There deep in green, so walled about with trees 
It looks a sylvan temple miles away, 
But near a farmhouse weathered, marred, and old, 
Stands Jordan Farms. Around it drowse the fields 
Where Henry Jordan played, and earlier yet 
His uncle Wellman. Ancient ivies drape, 
Unchanged, the room that saw the buried born. 

I paused in entering. Lowing cattle came 
Along the highway urged by shouting men, 
Red Devon oxen, handsome, sleek, and strong, 
Their wide horns flashing in the noon. Behind 
Their owner rode, pink-cheeked and cheery-eyed, 
Incarnate gale and sun; and seeing me 
He leisurely halted in the wind and shade. 

"A handsome place," he said, "but ruined now, 
With mossy roofs and window-frames awry, 
And tumbling walls and acres gone to waste, 
Where fifty years ago no finer farm 
Was found for miles, more rich and handsome too, 



6 JORDAN FARMS 

In Almon Jordan's time. But when he died 
His young half-brother Wellman, whom his wife, 
Some say, preferred in childhood, married her; 
Then waste, decay, and ruin followed fast. 

"And Henry, Almon's boy, had gifts of mind 
That elsewhere might have shone ; his baby head 
His father blessed in dying, telling them all, 
'Give him the chance I never had.' But here 
His wild stepfather's waste and mother's folly 
Chained him at work God never meant him for. 
So year on year he drudged against the grain 
With dead men's debts on land the dead ran down, 
Among these lonely hills where no one comes; 
Read books for hours to make his mind forget; 
And piled up useless knowledge, and grew poor." 

"Yes, yes," a passing neighbor echoed, sad 
As earth's grim prose in fancy's emerald isle, 
A village lawyer, bowed and white with years, 
"Wellman was only a boy and praised by all, 
Mother and ladies, college mates and friends, 
More loved than loving, marrying lightly; and 

grew — 
No matter what, since he is dead, but darkened 
By petty tyranny all his stepson's boyhood. 

"One summer evening near The Farms I heard 
A voice that mocked and domineered, and saw, 



JORDAN FARMS 7 

On drawing closer, Wellman's angry form, 
Fading in night among the tamarack trees. 
In glowing moonlight Henry passed, mere child, 
Before that home the dead had built for him, 
Trembling with powerlessness of wrath, and sob- 
bing 
Wild threats of what his manhood's years would 
do. 

"Some loved the orphan boy; he grew in time 
Grave, reverent, fearing God and wronging none; 
But fates were all against the man; his life, 
However good, was one long failure, sir." 

He shook his head; and over him a breeze 
Woke a dry sob among the brooding boughs, 
The drover echoing, "failure." I in doubt 
Approached the dead man's hushed and empty 
house. 

Too old, too molded round dead lives it seemed 
To make new bVes a home; yet sunny in age, 
And calm in green seclusion. Ruby-throats 
Built in the doorway, hummed among the flowers. 
The long grass drowsed with naught to do but 

dream. 
Like hospitable souls the apple-trees 
Reached down their reddening meal; and lisping 

leaves 



8 JORDAN FARMS 

Breathed table-talk of dead New England dames 
Through endless afternoons. Embayed in green, 
The porch, all verdure, seemed a twinkling pool, 
With trumpet-flowers for mirrored moonlight ; only- 
One spray above the door and entering guest 
Hung arms of benison, floral bugles flaring, 
Blowing dumb music out of no-man's land, 
Or out of lands that hold the owner now. 
His scythe hung rusting in the butternut. 
His ox-yoke rotted by the cherry's root. 
And saw and plane, the rust on tooth and edge, 
Amid the shavings where he left them lay. 

With borrowed key I softly tried the door, 
That yielded groaning; and alone I stood 
Where he so many a time had stood alone. 
Ancestral faces from their frames looked down. 
Old portraits lined the mantel-ledge, dark-stained, 
Perhaps where rain from leaking roofs had run, 
Or tears from welling hearts. A marker lay 
Between his Bible's leaves at John Fourteen. 
"Let not your heart be troubled," he had read; 
"Ye trust in God, believe ye too in me"; 
"I will not leave you comfortless." Even so. 
The Family Record, dim with time, was torn 
Where Wellman's name should be ; but right above 
Some later hand had traced the name again. 
That might mean much or nothing. All beside 
Was eloquent of a good and tranquil past. 



B. WHAT I LEARNED FROM MRS. 

ORMOND (FORMERLY HESTER 

DANE) 

With rustic, old-time elegance, her room 
Wherein I waited seemed an ancient isle 
In seas of modern change, ancestral plate 
On time-worn sideboard, chairs that Lafayette 
Might bow above to grave colonial dames. 
In front the windows viewed a yard with flowers. 
Behind they framed a scene of harvest where 
With cracking whips great nodding loads of hay 
Creaked slowly up to broad and shadowy barns. 
There moved the present flushed with heat and 

hope. 
My hostess entering led the past with her. 

"Your thoughts would make the dead relive; for 
me 
Still Henry Jordan lived, so late he died. 
How he and I grew friends at first remains 
A small blue peak in memory's distant haze, 
Too dim through years to trace the path we trod, 
Though not too dim to know we once were there. 
But I remember following far with him 
The small brown brook among the alders winding, 



10 JORDAN FARMS 

To watch the darting trout, or sit for hours 
On banks of fragrant mint, whose woven leaves 
We sailed in garlands down the dimpling stream. 
Through dark ravines where rills ran strangely red 
From moldering sandstone walls, and hemlocks 

hung 
Like night at noon, in timorous j oy we stole ; 
Or carved our names' initials interlaced 
On some broad beech's smooth and silvery rind. 
And head by head above the books we loved, 
The queer old books enchanting children then, 
When all were rare, and welcome being rare, 
We roamed with elves and talking birds, or cried 
At woes of many a heroine, robbed and wronged. 
Quaint Bible tales and history's lives we learned; 
And where the words were blind read meanings in, 
Such as make authors gasp and children glad. 

"Much too we played together. Deep in wood 
There grew a tree whose trunk, too early bent, 
Rose not in air but crept along the ground, 
All save the branching top that skyward spread. 
Here hour by hour where no intruder came 
In play we voyaged a fancied deep, our hull 
The trunk with upright boughs for mast; our sails 
The leaves that shook in wind forever cool. 
All tales and pictures out of foreign lands 
We gathered there, and studying them for chart 
Sailed where we would. Along the mottled trunk 



JORDAN FARMS 11 

The weeds and grasses, ruffled by the breeze, 
Waved up and down like billows as we steered. 
Only at times of one we spoke, whose oars 
In that dark wood we feared or feigned to fear, 
A pirate Wellman, who must never know 
Our ship or where it sailed. He never knew. 

"To that child's tryst one morning Henry came 
With cheerful face that laughed among the leaves. 
'Wellman is gone,' he cried, 'Wellman is gone, 
Far, far out west to Californian mines, 
With half a world between us. Mother cried, 
Because he goes and quarreling made him go; 
But I — I'm glad!' That was a happy day. 
Through oak and tulip-tree the sunbeam slid; 
Deep in the woodland sang a hermit thrush; 
And on our sylvan galley, hour by hour, 
Through haunted seas we old shall sail no more 
We floated forth together. Many a year 
On deeps where dipped no pirate Wellman's prow 
Our lives went gliding happily after that. 
He had no sister, brother none had I; 
Sister and brother in our souls we grew, 
Too close to be most close — or soon forget. 

"There came a time when one most dear to me 
Grew dear to him in ways I never dreamed. 
This ambrotype, faded as memories fade, 
Was hers her bridal day — the face he chose — 



12 JORDAN FARMS 

With glad yet haunted eyes, as if she knew 

That love was near and death not far away 

That fateful hour. She died so long ago 

The mere recalling tells me I am old. 

Sweet, gentle face; men like a clinging vine, 

And love its memory past all living love 

When death undoes its beauty. Peace to the dead ! 

"She was my little sister, sir; and I, 
Who half had mothered, could not hate her now 
For stealing him, whose grave and careworn face — 
When he was man and she was only a child — 
Would meet her laugh with slowly kindling smile. 
So child grew woman, playmate grew beloved, 
Before we knew, but yet no pledge was theirs. 

"For Henry dared not marry, not with her, 
That fragile child, unfit for want's hard road, 
The bitter, only road that Wellman's life — 
Thoughtless and free, flinging the golden shower — 
Left that impoverished home. And duty stilled 
Each bridal thought before a mother's need. 
For wild, fast men, her husband's western mates, 
Had trained in vices never known till then 
That pleasure-loving heart. Those golden dreams, 
Returning others robbed of health and home, 
To Wellman's friends gave back a ruined soul, 
Incurable. For old days women still, 
Though men condemn, recall him tenderly; 



JORDAN FARMS 13 

Great nature's work of mingled grace and guile, 
With charm so sweet his victim, knowing all, 
Forgave, — so once to women Wellman seemed. 
And this his angel yet may plead above: 
Each darkest deed, all malice, all things more 
Than wayward flights of many a petted son, 
Were never seen before those western years 
With wild adventurers, ruiners of their friends. 

"Now first across my sister's humble days 
Flashed fortune's changing gleam. A gray great- 
uncle, 
Whose daughter's name she bore, whose dim old 

eyes 
Beheld in her his own dead Ellen's youth, 
Moved by sad memories willed her all he owned, 
Green miles of meadow, golden wands to wave 
And make hope's visions true, the long deferred. 

"This Wellman learned when sin's requiting 

hour — 
That troubled conscience, yet with driving fear 
Made dumb its warning — placed him, home and 

name, 
And loved one's peace if yet he loved, in power 
Of one who wooed our little heiress. Then — 
We guess what terms they made, what bland 

excuse. 
'No harm,' their evil angel whispered, 'nay, 



14, JORDAN FARMS 

True kindness rather, guiding one so young 
To her own good, uniting wealth to wealth.' 
So, plotting well, between the loving pair 
They thrust an evil shadow, lengthening still; 
Till all one night, while Henry talked with us, 
Burst out like lightning. Clearly yet I see 
The nephew-stepson's angry face, the lips 
Lashing the liar, and eyes like probing fire, 
A lifetime's injuries finding voice at last. 
Even I who knew him stared; and Ellen heard 
White as the lily bells her bosom heaved. 
Just once I thought, 'She might not choose him 

now'; 
Till Wellman, cowering but defiant, sneered, 
'Brave frightener of girls !' and Henry turning 
Stopped short before her glance. In that long 

pause 
Between our blinds through open windows blew 
The dewy blossom's odor. Hushed and mild 
The rippling river talked with tranquil night. 
Then something touched me, now remembering first 
His lack of sisters, all she meant to me. 
I stole away, and past my window heard 
A wild, dark figure muttering curses go. 

"Late, late that evening after Wellman left 
They sat beneath the maple, through whose leaves 
The moon looked in, retired, and looked again. 
Some barrier broke that hour, beyond recall 



JORDAN FARMS 15 

Uniting two who might have chosen others ; 
But all is past, and none can change it now. 

"Yet fatal work began that moonlit night 
From Wellman foiled, whose bright, unbalanced 

mind 
Too much our uncle's feeble age admired. 
And now beside his deathbed Wellman urged 
Art, charm, and flattery, too, in anger's cause. 
Our uncle died. His first will, seven years made, 
Gave Ellen all; the last, a fortnight old, 
Gave part to Wellman, most to charity. 

"But nothing of that one week before we knew, 
My sister's bridal night, when late in June 
Before this very alcove where to-day 
I sit so old and lonely, stood the bride; 
And friends who made life sweet for her and me 
In voices now unheard breathed hope and love 
Round sunset-kindled windows. Red and white, 
Lining the wall from gate to doorway, bloomed 
My great-grandmother's roses. Dewy winds 
With breath of honeysuckle filled the air; 
And all seemed happy. First to greet the bride 
Was Wellman, bowing like some old grandee. 
He may have smiled at what he learned that day, 
And all know now, his triumph and his shame. 
He kissed the bride his bygone joys made poor, 
And mocking wished her joy, and went his way. 



16 JORDAN FARMS 

"And so my sister came to Jordan Farms. 
With sunny head, like morning light she flitted 
By smoky wainscot, huge, colonial crane, 
And long, dark cellars piled with cask and bin, 
Or fed the flushed and hurrying harvest hands 
When sheaves were heaped and rumbling thunder- 
heads heaving. 
And she was glad ; but round the place there clung 
Black nearing clouds that kindness hid from her. 
Often at night, he told me, half awake 
The new-made husband saw through darkened 

panes 
The peering boughs of elm and tamarack grow 
Dim wolves of want that rose and fell on wind 
Against the barrier soon to give them way; 
And groaned and said: 'He might have kept his 

wealth, 
But told in time that we could wait and plan.' 
With bitterer tears dead love and late remorse 
Wet the frayed pillow where his mother dreamed, 
Or showed the gray grandmother's grief, who lay 
Mourning, she moaned, beside her open grave. 
Her Wellman, youngest born, bright, handsome, 

learned, — 
Child of the gay young wooer whom in youth 
She chose, misjudged, refused; and married late, — 
Who drank up knowledge at a glance, and flashed 
And scintillated while the rest were dumb, 
Indulged and flattered through the years to be 



JORDAN FARMS 17 

The family plunderer and the family shame; 
And ever in her eyes the dumb reproach 
Of him who stayed, her younger Esau, robbed 
Of wealth, career, and boyhood's happy hours. 

"A year went by. A child was born, but died 
At four days old, the prettiest little thing, 
The only grandchild mother's house had known. 
Within the chapel Henry sat by me — 
For grief that moment drew our minds together — 
Sole, lonely mourners. Till the sexton came 
Against his heart the little coffin lay. 
That was the only time in all his life 
Those hands held son of his; and he, I know, 
Thought much of children. Winter came again; 
And darker yet the shade of death returned 
For my doomed sister, yet, disguised, it long 
Left hope alive; and bitterly Henry thought 
How wasted wealth that either might have owned, 
When life hung wavering in the doubtful scale 
Perhaps had saved her; but I think not so 
Nor lay her death on Wellman's burdened soul. 
Her heart was brave, and like a saint she died. 

"Three hours past midnight from the door I 
stepped ; 
'Twas bitter cold, keen stars and twinkling frost. 
All life seemed exiled from the frozen fields. 
A something dead, a living force of death, 



18 JORDAN FARMS 

Gripped face and bosom. Hollow underfoot 
Like ancient coffins crunched the crusted snow; 
And sidelong through a distant window glowed 
The dreary lamp that watched a passing soul. 
Then some one came and whispered, 'All is over'; 
And in I went, and found my sister's hand 
Clasped in her husband's, but between the two 
The Mystery old as Eve. Above her closed 
The grave, and from her burial we returned 
To that still house and evening's silent meal. 

"Two hollow, aching hearts where each might 
fill 
The other's void, and bound with common grief, 
We parted late that night. The silvering moon 
Made rugged cliffs loom bland and beautiful. 
So grief that hour transformed and mellowed him. 
He pressed my hand and whispered, 'Come again, 
Come often now. Hester, good-night, good-night.' 
Often I came; and often near my door 
He filled her chair among the lily leaves 
At first. Then sorrow waned and life renewed, 
Life with one task for him and one for me. 
Young grasses peeped on Ellen's grave ; and over 
Dead grief and hope grew cares of everyday. 

"I laid my flowers to-day on Ellen's mound, 
And half on his, sighing in that still plot 
Of ancient memories, over withered dreams 



JORDAN FARMS 19 

Of girlhood's glad, undisillusioned dawn; 
The poor, forgotten farmer's wife, the low, 
Unheeded grave of him who all those years 
Had looked on life with brave, clear, open eyes, 
To find its hidden wealth and share with me. 
But God knows worth, however men forget." 



C. WHAT I LEARNED FROM JUDGE 
WEYBURNE 

Lonely but lovely, ridged and rent by streams, 
'Mid shoaling verdure, ever changing bloom, 
And gemmed with lakes, that little town unrolls 
Whereof I tell. With nature's hush enamoured, 
Retired from courts, Judge Weyburne here grows 

old 
Among the scenes from which his boyhood climbed. 
And underneath his elms, or cool within 
His deep verandah hung with rustling vines, 
Through which I often thought a phantom past 
Moved while he spoke, he told me all he knew 
Of Jordan Farms. His voice was like the leaves 
At times, a rustling sorrow for the dead. 

"Last night so sweetly untranslatable 
The brook flowed talking through the bygone 

years, 
It washed my thoughts by memories old and sad 
In Wellman's life, that, wrecking hopes of friends, 
Trod selfish joy's familiar, time-worn road 
To fraud and public shame, till grief and care 
His life had caused broke her who loved him down. 
Long years of sickness fell on Jordan Farms. 
Henry's last hope of college, friends, career, 



JORDAN FARMS 21 

Such feeble hope as Wellman's waste had left, 

Died out in eyes that watched a mother's bed; 

Died out in ears the doctor's warning filled: 

'Her broken mind clings round her home of years ; 

If torn away her tottering reason goes'; 

And groaning out of life's great hope resigned, 

The son on whom the load had fallen — stayed. 

"Now when he weighed his future, prisoned 
here, 
A Tennyson's Ulysses, only bound 
Forever on his little Ithaca, 
Forever watching from his vine-clad porch 
Man's far-off knowledge like a setting star, 
Forever hearing in his ear the moan 
Of western seas no bark of his might sail, — 
Chained down for life at all he least could do, — 
If then at midnight, tired and wronged, he heard 
A late returning reveler drive below, 
Unharness, fume, and reeling climb the stair, 
I'll not condemn his wrath. But household grief 
And alienated friends uniting, caused 
That elder prodigal's willing exile soon, 
His burden dropped for other lives to bear. 

"Years Wellman roamed, as once in earlier days, 
Far from New England; other friends he gained, 
Flattered and fleeced and lost; and might be dead 
For all that those he left behind him heard. 



22 JORDAN FARMS 

"Meanwhile his nephew's married life, that pure, 
Uplifting force, keen contrast with his own, 
Was closed by death. But still the work went on 
Begun by woman's hand, though cold the hand. 
His wedded days had opened wide for him 
An unread volume, gently, gravely sweet, 
In life's long series. Still with tear-dimmed eyes 
In silent hours of evening he could con 
That revelation, though the gentle hand 
That gave it first no more could turn the page. 
Some months perhaps he gazed with breaking heart 
On empty cloak or chair; but healing time 
Poured balm on that, and round them wove a world 
Of tender musings, holy memories. 
Still from his album spoke her buried face. 
Her thoughts moved still, awakening in his brain 
From bygone words he now had time to weigh. 
And so the years went by like drifting clouds. 

"Then, old before her time, his mother died, 
Leaving her little that remained to him. 
And strangely soon her death drew Wellman home. 
His vulture nostril sniffed the dead, and hoped 
Some legacy. New friends had found him out, 
And driven the hunted fox to seek his den. 
Now, too, the only home his waste had left 
Was that wild, wind-swept tract on Harmon hill 
That years ago his wife had deeded him, 
Not his to sell, but his for life to use. 



JORDAN FARMS 23 

There on his eyrie perched the bird of prey; 
For folly and fate and wrong before his birth 
Had made him that, a helpless, hungering thing, 
To guard against through life, and pity dead. 
That presence woke in Henry's days a mood 
He hoped outgrown, bickering and sordid care, 
The kind man's wrath at being roused to wrath, 
Marring with rage calm hours of thought and love, 
As bitter boyhood marred. He told me once 
How first they met after those years between. 

"It was an evening hour in harvest time. 
And Henry down among the marshy swales 
And bottomlands was mowing, tired with toil, 
But calm at heart, at peace with God and man. 
No sound was there but the soft swish his scythe 
Made, shearing through the deep marsh grass, no 

stir 
But those same grasses, waving dreamily 
In winds of coming night. Earth seemed as if 
It had forgotten ages long ago 
Man and the works of man. In such an hour 
May souls win searoom to put forth and sail, 
Free from the storms of passion, where no thoughts 
Of other minds, like rocks protruding, threat 
The fleet and fragile dream. On Henry stole, 
As many a time before, the spell. Just then 
A misty form by pool and alder-clump 
More near and near approached. At first it seemed 



24, JORDAN FARMS 

A phantom stolen from his thoughts, or sent 
From night's dim bound ; but soon a face appeared, 
Then mockery, and the earthling's evil mood; 
And frowning front to front the kinsmen met. 

"Quick challenge there and sneering, bold reply, 
Touched rumored insult done the newly dead, 
That now was owned as true. In western lands, 
The hour death freed him, Wellman wooed and 

won, 
With lies that hid the truth from her, a wife 
Too good for him to nurse and feed his age; 
Child too of one whom Henry's father loved, 
A cousin lost on western prairies, dead, 
And long not heard from. 'So your sweet, mild 

blood, 
In one your cousin though no blood of mine, 
May soothe my evenings.' Wellman sneered and 

went, 
Dwindling through haze; and seemed in Henry's 

eye 
A great brown spider crawling down its web 
To a new fly, a victim near and dear, 
Whom dead men's voices bade him watch and 

guard. 

"Good cause for fear was there. If ever wife 
Through loving heart and undiscerning eye 
By very virtues might make Wellman worse, 



JORDAN FARMS 25 

That wife ill fortune gave. But what she told, 
And he denied not, of their life together 
On Harmon hill, must damn him. Far from towns, 
High up with howling winds in winter's teeth, 
The only road that through ravine and wood 
Sought out their home banked fathom deep with 

snow, 
No man nor woman in the house but them, 
No neighbor but the stars and wailing night, 
She lay there at his mercy, helpless heard 
That sly, edged malice, armed with wit, or saw 
The Circe cup poured out, the man turned brute, 
The brute turned savage, and her home his den. 

"On such a night, when every breath of air 
Was barbed with cold and thick with whirling 

snow, 
One knocked on Henry's door. He opening saw 
His uncle's wife, her little son on arm, 
On those chill doorstones, wrapped in shawls that 

gleamed 
With tags of ice, like corpses both from cold. 
She entered reeling, blown by entering wind, 
Then faced her host. Snowflakes were in her hair, 
And prayer and wrath and anguish in her eyes. 

" 'I come to you,' she said, 'a friendless woman, 
Find none save you who, kindred even in law, 
Might hear my husband's deed this evening told, 



26 JORDAN FARMS 

And give me help.' Half fainting here she sank. 

And Henry made the fire roar up the flue, 

Gave her warm drinks and wraps, and played the 

nurse, 
With still, white lips and eyes that shone like 

knives. 

"Hours passed, and through the storm a man 
rode down, 
Mad with debauchery and the night's wild spell. 
As midnight struck he knocked on Henry's door. 
Then the pale wife between the drowsing fire 
And drowsing women called to watch with her, 
Started from slumber, heard against the pane 
The beating of the spruce's wind-blown boughs 
Like cold, insistent fingers gloved with snow, 
And close without two voices, one that called 
For entrance like the rapping twigs, and seemed 
Like them inhuman cold, yet wildly whirled 
In vortices of tempest; then the other 
Made answer curt and stern as ringing iron. 
The sterner voice prevailed; the other mixed 
With howling gusts through distance, drowned in 

rasp 
Of closing doors and bolts that shot in place. 
She drew the curtain. Through the grizzly whirl 
Moved a gray form that seemed a moving drift 
Out of the light, and out of her life forever. 



JORDAN FARMS 27 

"That other entering softly roused the fire, 
Gently and gravely bade his guest good-night, 
And late alone sat near the flames, that lit 
A strangely tranquil face, in steely calm, 
Calm as the sword that slays and quivers not; 
Calm from the strong man's joy in righteous 

wrath, 
When mercy leagues with all it fought before. 
In such a mood he summoned law to part 
Whom man had joined and God had willed 

asunder, 
Inexorable as fate, while safe through him 
A pallid woman shunned the world and mourned. 

"And Wellman's wife divorced him, bringing 
home — 
To childhood's door, the door she left as bride — 
A helpless child and broken heart to show 
What marriage gave her. God, we say, knows 

best; 
But I could weep for all the happy lives 
That might have been had Wellman never lived, 
And weep for him among his victims too. 

"Within a month a poor, unlettered girl, 
Who posed as wife and might or might not be, 
Called from some past none knew of, shared his 

home, 
And shared his night of life that darkened now. 



28 JORDAN FARMS 

For on that lonely hill with none but her, 
Save some chance workman in the fields by day, 
Depraved with drink and greed, by solitude 
Walled off from friendship's humanizing sun, 
What moods he sounded none shall ever know. 

"Sometimes we saw him like his manhood's 
ghost, 
Pale, sunken cheek and gray, disheveled hair, 
And cold blue eye with glint of opium dreams, 
Glide still by former friends, or watch for hours, 
With thoughts he never told, his boyhood's home. 

"And once when sickness called, up Harmon 
hill 
With Hester Ormond, then a bride, I rode 
Through landscape lovely as my words are sad. 
Above the peaks of all the region round, 
Wild, rocky crest and skyward heaving wood, 
Cleared round the summit, like a dome it rolls, 
With billowy pasture and smooth meadow, swept 
By winds before unbroken many a mile. 
Men say that from its top when air is clear 
They see the distant Sound like shining haze 
Past ridge on ridge of dim blue hills, that seem 
To melt and mingle with the sea and sky. 

"The house is low and small, in open sun 
On east and south, with apple-trees behind; 



JORDAN FARMS 29 

But north a tall, dense hedge of hemlocks gives 
A touch of wild and somber beauty, dark 
As evil and mysterious as the dead. 

"Here Wellman, wandering in delirium, lay. 
And Hester watched that day, and I in turn 
That night, a glorious night of harvest moon. 
As midnight neared the pillowed face began, 
In strange, coherent, lucid lunacy, 
A story never meant for me. He told 
How Henry slowly after Ellen's death — 
Slowly, her memory held him back for years — 
Turned toward the sister, might have married her 
In middle age and love's mild afterglow. 
Then friends departing called her far away; 
And letters passed that fell in Wellman's hand, 
And went no further. Hurt and far from home, 
She waited long, then married one most kind, 
But not her choice, and wore her bridal veil 
As mournful mark of love's negation now, 
Not love's new dawn. I thought the speaker raved, 
Till, pointing me with bony hand, he showed 
The very drawer wherein the letters lay. 
I found and brought them, proof of all he said, 
Each old envelope like a coffin holding 
Chill outer form where once a hope had lived. 
What made him do it? Spite or jealousy; 
Sheer will's perversion wrought by dissolute years ; 
Or hope of aid from one who, kind to him, 



30 JORDAN FARMS 

Thus married wealth and so might help him more? 
I asked him there; but through delirium's wall 
No question pierced, no answer ever came, 
Or ever will. In that bare, dismal room, 
With lamp turned down, while on the roof above 
Moved whispering boughs, and moonlight robed 

the world, 
'Twas eerie, half unearthly all alone 
To hear him talk to none who heard him. Once 
He rose among the bedclothes, crying at me, 
'I fooled you, lovers !' and the aureoled heaven 
Through broken pane and sagging casement lit 
That wild, gaunt, mocking face. And then again 
In changing mood he seemed to feel remorse, 
Till all was lost in aimless babbling, talk 
Of college days with wealthier mates than he, 
Vain hopes, and money this one owed by rights, 
And house and lands another robbed him of. 
I once told Henry what that night revealed; 
But Hester knows not yet, and hours next day 
Watched there in pitying kindness, on her left 
The old locked drawer with letters tragic now, 
And on her right the man who marred her life. 

"He drowned that winter, drowned before my 
eyes. 
With sad, foreboding heart in afternoon 
I drove along the lake, whose frozen face 
That hour was empty. I remember well 



JORDAN FARMS 31 

To my town eyes how desolate seemed the scene. 
For thaws that followed storms made puddled ice 
All pied with slush and snow, and draggled woods 
On melting snowbanks dripped disconsolately. 

"Then Henry came beyond a little cove 
That laid between a treacherous frozen floor, 
Feeding his cattle, and Wellman through the fields 
Rounding the lake's curved margin, joined him 

there. 
I reined my pony wondering what might be. 
Across the pool the lonely landscape framed 
A leering haystack, ugly, squat, and brown, 
'Mid shaggy steers, and those two muffled forms 
That filled the foreground seemed as bleak and 

stern. 
A long hill-meadow joined the land of both, 
That Wellman claimed but Henry owned and 

mowed 
Always; it cost them bitter words before. 
Brokenly and confusedly from far 
I heard that mentioned. High their voices rose, 
And each called back in parting sounds I lost. 

"That angry hour made Wellman rash and blind. 
With face turned backward, toward the sleigh he 

came 
Across the ice, that on a day like this 



32 JORDAN FARMS 

Was death's own trap, — and broke so near the 

bank 
He could not save himself though others might. 
I saw and ran, slipped, fell, and rose and ran, 
And knew it vain, but saw that fatal cry 
Reached Henry's ear. One moment fixed he stood 
In doubt or dying wrath, then down the shore, 
Hurrying and white and risking life, he came. 
The ice broke through with him, but 'twas in shoal, 
He yet might save, — when some old, gnarled root 
Deep under water caught his foot and held. 
Wildly he wrestled with the claw that gripped, 
But all in vain, and soon he knew it vain. 
The water bubbled near, and that grim sky 
Looked down unmoved, till on the bank we stood, 
Where neighbors near us round a prostrate form 
Talked in low tones, and one was answering, 

'dead.' 
I saw on Henry's face a mournful frown 
Pass by and die away. With forehead bowed, 
And frame that seemed to drop a lifelong load 
In one great hour, he whispered as in prayer: 
'I would have saved him, God, but better so; 
Far better so for dead and living both.' 
For years I heard that whisper, hear it now. 

"That day, in doubt if Wellman's mate were 
wife, 
We asked his nephew, being next of kin, 



JORDAN FARMS 33 

'Where shall we bury him?' 'Anywhere/ he said; 
'Close at my mother's feet, if so you will, 
To ask her pardon; or far as strangers lie. 
But bury him honorably, leaving room for me 
By Ellen's mound.' Then some one said, 'Whom 

life 
Divided let the grave divide in death,' 
And bade us dig beside that willow tree. 
But while the sexton worked a cousin came; — 
She died herself next year; she always held 
That Wellman was a brand men failed to pluck 
From burning at due time. 'I'll have no gulf 
Divide my cousin from his family dust,' 
She said; 'fill up that pit and dig again. 
Eternity is long; in all that time 
The man who here abased his life might lift it; 
And these two streams that from one fountain ran 
In the great sea of glass mingled with fire 
Might flow together.' So we dug again, 
In that still place where yesterday I stood; 
Where age, deep reading hearts, and back of them 
What made those hearts ere they could mold 

themselves, 
Finds many a fierce illusion melt away; 
Where pitying lips that once condemned recant. 
And there by wife and stepson Wellman lies, 
According to old faith, which I believe, 
Till the last trump shall summon. Ample time 
Will they have there to grow more reconciled." 



PART TWO 

THE BUILDER BEHIND THE WASTER 

Therefore I summon age 
To grant youth's heritage, 

Life's struggle having so far reached its term: 
Thence shall I pass, approved 
A man, for aye removed 

From the developed brute; a God though in the germ. 
Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra. 

The sulphurous rifts of passion and woe 
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, 
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. 

Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal. 



D. WHAT I LEARNED FROM PROFESSOR 
MILNER 

"Look there along my finger. Mile on mile 
Through parted hills the curling river rolls. 
The lovelier that they run not where they chose 
But where they could, the giant spirals gleam, 
Like some great poet's thought, that urging long, 
And hearing far beyond the summoning sea, 
Broke out a way through language. Ten miles 

north, 
With foot in stream and windy head, that height, 
As I remember, looks down on Jordan Farms, 
The quaint old homestead; lanes and weathered 

walls, 
And ancient well-sweep, and gnarled cherry-trees 
That blossomed white in April. Henry dead — 
His well and words beneath the cherry bough 
Were welcome both. The past lived here in him. 

"Thought, faith, and commerce found their 
channel once 
Through these hill towns, that life's withdrawing 

flood 
Leaves only stagnant pools. His type is fading, 
Forever dwindling, drifting townward ever, 
Where once 'twas common: self-taught rural sons 



38 JORDAN FARMS 

Of those grave, old-time farmer Puritans, 

Who plowed and hewed and sharpened tools 

beneath 
The grand, grave shadow of the eternal world, 
By swath and dairy weighed God's law and man's. 

"Just one and twenty years it is to-night 
Since first I trod this valley. Here I came 
With gaunt old Veering, searching cliff and stream, 
And shells and strata, where they dumbly told 
Of rocks upheaved in some dim dawn of time. 
And searching so we came by Jordan Farms. 
Then Henry, glad to quaff a scholar's lore, 
And roam the fields, for days was host and guide. 
I see him yet against the morning sun 
And dewy pastures, walking paths with me; 
Now pointing where the far-off fissures ran 
Of earthquakes ages old, and rivers wound; 
Now urging us under a burning sun 
To raid his orchard, saying pears were here, 
And apples there, and cherry and plum beyond. 
So Veering studied cliffs, and I our guide, 
A soul like Adirondack mountains, worn 
Through bygone storms in unremembered years; 
High spires, where once the cloud for pennon flew, 
Pared halfway down to plain, but massive still. 

"One day far off on Harmon hill he mowed 
When letters came; and lured by highland air, 



JORDAN FARMS 39 

Whose vagrant breezes down our valleys blew 

Through wilted fields, I rode with them to him. 

Topping a hill almost a mountain lay 

That airy meadow, high and far from man 

On the lone, houseless peak, where bush and twig 

Shook evermore in wind. Below I viewed 

Rough range, green valley, crinkling brook; and 

gray 
O'er field and spire a muttering storm drove on. 
So dark it neared I sought the gaunt old barn, 
Whose huge gray doors hung wide, and windy sill 
Looked eagle-like for many a league below. 
Just as I mused, 'So near the floors of God 
Romance might walk with toil,' I heard behind 
Gruff teamster's shout and snapping thong; and 

then 
Between the doors a yoke of oxen plunged, 
With rocking horns, the piled-up hay behind 
Reeling and yawing like a ship at sea. 
Even as they came the storm above them broke, 
Lashing the shingles loud as giant knouts, 
And wrapping earth in scurrying veils of gray. 
A voice I knew rose through the patter and whirl; 
And in the door, hatless, with wind-blown hair, 
Stood Henry Jordan, framed in crackling clouds. 
Above the maple shook and thunder rang. 
Behind in drowsy undertone we heard 
The oxen munch the mows. The wild fresh air 
Flowed by without, the clover scent within; 



40 JORDAN FARMS 

And loud o'erhead through beam and board re- 
sounded 
The wind's huzza and drops in rhythmic dance. 

"By lightning gleams he read his letters through, 
And not more strangely moved have households 

heard 
A broken clock none thought to hear again 
Striking beneath a ghostly hand. In rain, 
Scarce heeding where he drove, he rode away ; 
And half that night men heard him pace his room, 
Talking at times to empty air, till pale, 
With hollow, haunted eyes, he came at dawn. 
'My uncle's one time wife has died,' he said, 
'In poverty, friends dead and helpers gone. 
The world's cold charity has lodged her son 
In this rich orphanage that writes me now, 
Demanding aid. I promise nothing yet, 
But come with me and see the youngster's face.' 

"All day we journeyed, first by woodland roads, 
Where crowding bushes washed our brows with 

dew, 
And then by train. Silent with hat drawn down 
Sat Henry, hardly hearing words I said. 
And billowy meadows and the echoing hills, 
And rivers flashing sunlight, and the rest, 
Fled by unseen. But when our journey closed 
Beneath the great foundation's door, where wealth 



JORDAN FARMS 41 

From toil or sin of generations gone 
Now housed the orphan poor, he suddenly paused, 
Conning these words that lined the cornerstone: 
For Orphan Children, Built by Aaron Dane. 
'And think,' he said, 'his treasure might have built 
Rich tombstones for the dead who need them not, 
Need nothing now on earth from him or me. 
What better use could I have found ? Through me, 
Not mine but held in trust for dead of mine, 
Its later channel must have poured it here. 
The deed was child of one who wronged me; yet — 
God willed it good, it bears no taint of him.' 
I saw no point in what he said; he seemed 
Conversing rather with himself than me. 

"But when his infant cousin crowned his knees 
The man grew changed, tender yet warily fierce, 
In wavering doubt, as one might think the Moor 
Eyed Desdemona when he hoped her true. 
Above those azure orbs he bent his own, 
As if he waved a torch behind that door 
Of thought's dim cave and asked who dwelt within. 
Then close to either infant cheek he held 
A childish portrait near the lad's in age; 
I've seen one since; 'twas Wellman when at school. 
Now on the painted boy, now on the living, 
Now on that sweet young face where girlhood 

seemed 
With parted lips to wait life's blessing, gazed 



42 JORDAN FARMS 

The tense, dark eyes that seemed to strain and 

burn. 
Then up he rose and clasped the trembling lad. 
'I think he is his mother's child/ he said, 
'And therefore henceforth mine.' That very night 
We took the boy with us and journeyed home. 

"Through long, dull, drowsy hours the rushing 

train 
Piled mile on mile; and soon on Henry's breast 
The weary boy had sobbed himself to sleep. 
As sea-gulls nest beneath the sheltering ledge 
Of ocean's cliff, the curly head lay safe 
Under the gaunt, broad shoulder; and above 
Two eyes looked down on him like ocean's deep, 
Soft, fathomless, but revealing through their 

gleam 
Hints of old wrecks and woes the waves had hid. 
Sometimes on craggy heights the moonbeams fell, 
On shining lake and swiftly sliding tree. 
Sometimes beside us like a phantom train 
Our own reflection rolled. I winked and drowsed; 
But still in waking saw the slumbering boy, 
And those deep eyes that watched him as he slept. 

"So God's good angel entered Henry's home 
In likeness of a little child, and drove 
The lingering shadow from his lonely days. 



JORDAN FARMS 43 

"For many a summer after that we met, 
By woodland lane or meadow heaped with hay 
In hours of toil. Or under arching elms 
He leisurely conned some volume, his or mine, 
And puffed from tranquil pipe the filmy wreaths 
He watched in thinking, counting himself alone 
With God and ancient solitude. But when 
My step rang near him, down the book would fall 
On turf or moss, and out his comment came, 
Keen nature's challenge to my greater lore. 
Then we below would argue, and above 
The chattering squirrels argued, and the wind 
Blew lazily through the leaves and waving grass. 
Or where some highland river's curling sweep 
Had mined the bones of ancient Indian braves, 
He told the legends of his township, lives 
Of early settlers, thrilling, often sad, 
Of feathered chiefs whose moccasins had brushed 
Through dew and blood there in old woodland 

wars; 
And weighed with me the rights and wrongs of 

deeds 
Awful to think of in that forest dusk. 

"Warm friends were his; and one in widow's 
veil, — 

When Marshall, Wellman's child, neared man- 
hood, — came 

To make her birthplace home, near woodland mills 



44 JORDAN FARMS 

That, once her husband's, now were hers, and lay- 
In a small valley rumbling drowsily. 
Dark groves of hemlock lined the long ravine, 
Where often for beauty of the scene we drove, 
And the unpausing wheels that hummed below 
Waked thoughts of laborers lost in fairyland. 
But angry millhands once in drunken mob 
Endangering her and hers, we rode through night; 
Came none too soon; and there my comrade spoke, 
Revealing powers unguessed till then, and calmed 
The angry crowd and sent them home in shame. 
Relieved yet anxious, still we stayed on guard; 
But not a whisper broke the calm. Below us 
The long brown walls, like beings freed from fear, 
Drowsed in the moonbeams, charmed by draping 

elms 
And crooning water. Stars went wheeling down ; 
And heaven all night declared the glory of God. 

"What thoughts were hers whose rest we 
guarded so, 
We need not ask. But late the following day, 
Coming on her and Henry all alone 
In woodland paths of sun-illumined leaves, 
I heard what I intended not, which you 
Must tell to none till both are dead. Her voice, 
Gentle and pleading, dwelt on Marshall's name.* 
'He longs for college where his future lies. 
You cannot send him; I am rich; let me.' 



JORDAN FARMS 45 

Then — her companion answering, this might be 
As last resort, but never even from her 
While hope was left in what himself could do; 
And men might talk, and it were wrong to rob 
The dead man's child of what he saved for her, 
And so his friends might feel and blame the 

mother — 
She added, 'Once I might have had the power 
To aid my friend's adopted son as mine, 
Save for lost letters.' Then she murmured more, 
That winds in foliage made inaudible. 
The pair grew silent. Suddenly through the 

gloom 
Deep in the woodland sang a hermit thrush. 
A pole and shawl as meant for mast and sail 
Drooped limply still above the moldering trunk 
Whereon they sat; and Henry's lips were saying: 
'Old age may launch its boats; they never sail. 
Too much for many a year have you and I 
Been to each other ever to be less; 
But frozen wax takes no new seal; we're old, 
So old my Ellen's grave is sunken now.' 
And she gazed long across the hills and said: 
'Yes, old we are, cold wax formed long ago.' 

"I turned to leave but broke a crackling bough. 
They rose and called me, spoke of Marshall still. 
Drawn on by that, I told what late I found 
At Jordan Farms, and now had come to tell, — 



46 JORDAN FARMS 

A little mine, no fabled hoard, but such 
As miser hills of lean New England yield, — 
And led them where it lay beneath gray bluffs, 
That, hard as penury, smiled in sunset then. 

"That hour on Henry's face there gleamed a 

light, 
As glowed the twilight down the reddening hill; 
For there it was, beyond all question true, 
His little treasure of the rocks, his own, 
The magic key to open learning's door, 
And give his boy the chance himself had missed. 
Thereafter often through the woods, alone 
Or timed to tools of other men, I heard 
His hammer tinkling in the dusky gorge. 
Sometimes at night, for eager hearts work long, 
It took an eerie sound, like blows of trolls; 
And sociable and firm at noon it rang, 
With joy of opening worlds for one beloved. 
So Marshall learned what learning's guardians 

give, 
Grew man and manly, nursed a leader's heart, 
We hope a leader's gift. Meanwhile at home 
The vein had ended, and the hammer ceased. 
Sumacs and vines with their unsightly veil 
Have draped the pit ; but should I pass to-day 
I should be haunted there by thoughts of him. 
Weary but faithful many a time he came 
With gray head bowed, and weakening in his age; 



JORDAN FARMS 47 

And resting oftener than in sturdier years, 
Would talk with me, each seated on our stone. 
'Of good and evil much we argued then/ 
'Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,' 
'And found no end, in wandering mazes lost'; 
Yet even as children roam a wondrous wood 
Through paths to nowhere came back nobler men. 
Some call him failure; some think otherwise." 



E. WHAT I LEARNED FROM MARSHALL 
JORDAN 

"As in a shadowy, preexistent state, 
A world of faded paintings, I remember 
A city, clang of hoofs and roar of trains, 
Gaunt, rumbling factories, and my mother's face, 
With loving eyes and lips that never smiled. 
And then no mother, strangers strangely kind, 
Flowers on a coffin, and a great new home, 
A man who frightened me with his piercing eyes, 
Then grew most tender, and my journey here. 

"Too young was I for grief or terror long. 
Brought into country beauty fresh from town, 
The great, wild playground of the clouds and stars 
Above, my own wide playground at my feet, 
As in a breath, while new waxed old, I grew 
Child of my guardian and his fields. We slept 
Together in the room he had as boy. 

"Now seemed I fallen on enchanted lands. 
In dim, unfleshly, spirit-haunted hours 
Of growing light we saw through open windows 
The giant maples wave their boughs, and heard 
Their leaves like Memnon whispering through the 
dawn. 



JORDAN FARMS 49 

Wondrous as elves, alive in open day, 
Bright colored birds perched on the gleaming sill. 
Nor lacked we phantoms true and terrible, 
When, dread as Grendel, from the marshes round 
Malaria-breathing fog in wind-blown forms 
Stalked down the moonlit fields, and through the 

window 
Thrust in an evil head and clutching hand. 
For hours behind my cousin or his men 
I watched the ever sliding furrow fall 
On bud and stubble, or through towering rye 
His wheeling cradle sling the golden swath. 

"Still memory when I ride a country road 
Recalls his long forefinger pointing out 
With what fantastic poise on writhing roots 
That yellow birch seemed half to grow in air; 
How yonder range through cloven walls revealed 
Its far, blue kindred, or the northern shrike 
Cut the loud wind, bloody and beautiful. 
Like starfish floating in an emerald sea 
The chestnut blossoms lit the depths of verdure; 
A painted harlot through her leafy screen, 
Beauty to gaze on and disease to touch, 
The poison sumac peered. Our thoughts beheld 
Mosaic mountains from the face of God 
Bear down stone tables thunder-scarred with laws ; 
Or cataracts like a gray historian's beard 
Half muffling voices out of time's abysm. 



50 JORDAN FARMS 

My guardian's treasured volumes hours I read 
In green enclosures, where the birds alone 
Kept twittering comment, and unswaddled thoughts 
Roamed books like orchards, plucking where I 

would. 
And still at every pause the mighty ghost 
Of him who wrote with lifted finger showed 
The stately landscape of our restful hills, 
Woods on blue skylines, hemlock-bordered brooks, 
Pink knolls in meadows where the red-top grew, 
And oats half ripened turning silver gray, 
Till letters glowed and words were wonderland. 

"One day while yet nor boy nor man, I reined 
A friend's blood stallion down the rim of streams 
O'erflowed from April freshets, wildly running 
In whirling loop or fierce and arrowy flume. 
Dim landmarks loomed beneath their glassy veil, 
Old stubble ridge and rut of wheel, and gleam 
Of tender grass like emerald. Then I saw 
A little maiden on a new-made isle, 
Marooned beyond a footbridge washed away. 
She called; wild arbutus was in her hair, 
And prayer and hope and terror in her eyes. 
Through waves in which the trampling stallion 

seemed 
An Aucassin's I brought her safe ashore. 
Not wholly stranger was she; with my cousin 



JORDAN FARMS 51 

Schoolmate and playmate had her mother been, 
And friend for many a year. The maid herself 
Had been to me a face and name, no more. 
But first her helpless, quick appeal for help, 
And then the added dignity she donned 
As recompense for dignity forgot, 
So much of woman in a child so young, 
Wrought on me now. I verily believe 
That in that hour the tendrils of her life 
Began to twine round mine, though far away 
Loomed still the hour when either thought of that. 
For long she seemed but as a pet to me, 
Mere child when I was man. Yet even then 
Would visioned faces, though they were not hers, 
Take on her likeness ; and through hours of night 
The ever rushing brooks did musically 
Repeat the name she bore, though not as hers, 
But love's; while rosy gleams that haunted long 
Untrodden realms of cloudland, earthward steal- 
ing, 
Grew part of everyday. So years went by; 
And child grew woman, playmate grew beloved, 
Before we knew; but yet no pledge was ours. 
The daisy chased the violet from our path; 
Grave asters chased the daisies; tingling frost 
With icy pendants hung the glittering wood; 
Yet we confessed not to our inmost hearts; 
And four long college years rolled in between. 



52 JORDAN FARMS 

"And now my one-and-twentieth birthday's eve 
Heard manhood's ocean break on childhood's shore, 
Where the tall ships that leave the land behind 
Through the dim distance, winged with mystery, 

sail. 
I locked my door, and in my room alone 
Heard the sad drizzle drip from eave and elm, 
And voices from the future, martial bugles, 
And cries from half-forgotten years. The words 
Of her who bore me seemed to load the wind; 
Its damp, cool fingers brushed my hair like hers. 

"My father's orphan son, denied alike 
His care and right to love his memory, 
Hence doubly fatherless, turned in thought to him. 
All call me 'mother's child,' yet oftentimes 
When sad old voices seemed to wail at night 
From purgatorial peaks beyond the dawn, 
I've thought a nobler self, that died in him, 
Revived in me might heal his branded name. 
But, hoping that, my only memory of him 
Remains a nightmare. Both my homes he haunted, 
A ghost none mentioned, none would seem to know. 

"Then came a knock, a face, and whispered 
voice, 
That called me down to see within that bed 
Where years ago my cousin's wife had lain, — 
And where her gray-haired sister, called in need, 



JORDAN FARMS 58 

By Henry stood, — a dying woman lie. 
My cousin found her, senseless, drenched, alone, 
Beside the road, where, cold in mist and rain, 
The wind for miles unbroken broke at last 
Through shuddering birches high on Harmon hill. 
She thought them strangers, knew her end was 

near, 
And poured from burdened heart a life of shame, 
Yet piteous too; but as I crossed the sill, 
A single word she uttered thrilled us all, — 
My father's name, and how they once had parted, 
And three years later through a city crowd 
She heard him call her old true name, but found 
A broken spirit moodily craving her; 
And came with him to live on Harmon hill. 

"All there was changed; he drank, but drank 
alone. 
Those laughing lips had little laughter now, 
Brooding and fierce; but that she hardly mourned. 
For none were left to love him then but her, 
Or flatter him, who from his cradle up 
Had fed on flattery; so he turned to her, 
Her own at last unchallenged. Then with time 
He grew more gentle, kind in little ways, 
And brooded over bygone things, and said, 
She must not judge one whom his parents cursed 
Before his birth with wayward moods and will, 



54, JORDAN FARMS 

First cousins, marrying as her church forbade. 
The very noon he drowned he kissed her brow; 
And there that moment willed her all he owned 
On this old yellowing leaf that twenty years 
She'd worn and gazed at, signed his dying day. 
No man before had given her in her life 
A dollar, save to buy his own delight; 
Here were gold keys to uninsulted days 
From one whose passions death had stilled forever. 
For that in sickness now she dragged her feet 
To see the house where once they lived, she said. 
All men were praising Henry, cursing him; 
Soon the one voice that cursed him not would 

cease, 
And tongues lay waste his undefended name 
For years; but even in death she bade us tell 
That one who knew him found his gentler side. 

"With that her message closed. Some random 

words 
She added later, which we hardly heard, 
Only I know the dead man's name was there. 
With thoughts none dared to tell we watched by 

her 
In turn, at midnight closed her lifeless eyes. 

"No sleep for me could follow that; and pale, 
In pallid dawn, I stole by room and stair. 
The household Bible, open wide, lay still 



JORDAN FARMS 55 

Where one had read who slept no more than I; 
And on the Family Record, yet undried, 
Where years ago his hand had torn it off, 
And morning's beam, like God's own finger, now 
Moved over it, as if in books above, 
My father's name was written in again. 

"Steps creaked on floors above; and, shunning 
speech, 
And haunted still by bat-winged thoughts of night, 
I walked abroad to meet the healing day. 
A tender halo, grief toned down by time, 
All round my way, for whom a voice that night 
Had blown its trumpet summoning up the dead, 
Enringed the present where the past had been. 
It haunted all: the fallen graveyard stone, 
Whose weathered names were lost in trailing vines ; 
The long deserted home, whose hollow eyes 
Gazed blank and windowless; cobwebbed beams 

of barns; 
And fences piled by buried fingers, brown 
And lichened rails, frail as an old man's frame, 
Their corners bound with knots of bitter-sweet, 
Ivy and starry clematis, and brush 
Like dense oblivion crowding on their age. 
Man's inner essence clothed what man had made. 
In these dead hearts that now no more could harm, 
Misunderstand or threat or rival me, 



56 JORDAN FARMS 

I read our human mystery as no eye 

Could see it through the passionate mist of life. 

"But when the roads grew full of clattering 

teams, 
Through woodland walks I turned, where once I 

played 
With wild, strange mates among the talking 

boughs. 
Now deep and solemn morning whispered there. 
The voice of centuries breathed through serrate 

leaves 
Of ancient oaks that garner truths of time. 
The hemlock kings, whose dots of growing green 
On darker foliage left from former years 
Made royal ermine, deigned me audience high 
Those airy hours of June; and tips of growth 
Around them flaming crowned the dusky pine, 
Youth's Christmas torches bright on limbs of 

green. 

"I spied a figure soon that moved before, 
Not seeing me, by knoll and dripping fall, 
Till where a cataract plunged my guardian turned, 
And meeting there we talked of random things. 
At last he said: 'To-day my office ends, 
And what the old have known the young must 

know. 
Now read this letter, dim with all the years 



JORDAN FARMS 57 

Your mother's grave has greened, her last fare- 
well. 
It came the day before I found you first.' 
In the dark, silent wood I kneeled and read. 



THE LETTER 

" 'Friend, I am dying. Let my letter sound 
Like legends graved on ancient sepulchres, 
Causing mild sadness but no violent grief 
For those who grieve no more. You asked me 

once 
How one like me could choose the man I chose. 
Would God some barrier then had risen between! 
My mother died too soon for face or voice 
To be recalled. From letters left by her 
I learned my parentage, built wistful dreams 
Round that far, unknown land where kindred 

dwelt 
Who knew not me, and where my parents grew. 
Behold fate's irony. From that land came one 
Not of our blood, but with a life inwoven 
At every thread with lives akin to mine. 
For that my heart leapt forth to him; and he, 
Who felt his power but knew not that which 

gave it, 



58 JORDAN FARMS 

Played on my moods, and watched his time, and 

won. 
He wed my savings; I a woman's dream. 

" 'The rest you know, and knowing, think of me, 
That she who once was but your uncle's wife, 
May be your cousin now. O friend, if fate 
Weigh not too heavy where it long has weighed, 
Remember my poor boy, who, left unhelped, 
May knock some wintry day at strangers' doors, 
And at my grave, nor win response from either.' 



"Tears blurred my mother's faded name; and 
pale, 
In that transfiguring hour that comes to all 
By love and faith and courage kin to God, 
However poor, my gray companion spoke. 

" 'The years/ he said, 'this morning made you 
man. 
Your sun is up to-day, and mine is down; 
And in my heart a warning cry, that soon 
The boy I reared must fill my empty room. 
My child, my blood, the voice is in your veins 
That tells you more of me than tongue can tell. 
I once had hopes and dreams that fire you now. 
They came to nothing; yet for them I vowed 
To clear your life of bars that ruined mine. 



JORDAN FARMS 59 

My task is done, and I at Heaven's throne 
Without a blush may meet your mother's eye. 
God bless your manhood all the years to come. 
If ever on trails of thought you seem to find 
The burnt-out fires of travelers gone before, 
Remember me, the blood so near your own, 
Not as men viewed, but as I strove to be.' 

"Each rustic trace and mark of blighted growth 
Fell from him now; I saw him, what he was, 
A soul unbroken 'mid its ruined plans, 
A baffled longing out of ending age 
Forever looking westward unfulfilled, 
The selfsame longing bold with youth in me. 
A sunbeam wrapped his face in glory, eyes 
Mild as a spaniel's, though the eagle's beak 
Soared high and bold between ; that lofty brow, 
Like mountain domes that linger long in light 
Of hopes that shine not on the glens below. 
And all that centuries back my sires and his 
Had hoped and willed in vain, welled up in me, 
As earth's long caverned waters leap in sun. 

"Hours glided there, and late we journeyed 
home. 
The sainted wood that day for halo wore 
Reflected glamour from my burning mood. 
A Titan's face the gray rock profile peered. 
With roots like human limbs that yellow birch 



60 JORDAN FARMS 

Bestrode yon bowlder like a dryad chained. 
And wandering gleams of light for ushers led 
With golden mace by aisle and anteroom 
To grassy vistas fenced with towering trees. 

"There fell on me a spell, an awe, a fear, 
As of a God revealed. The grove ahead 
Seemed grove no more, but some cathedral's pile. 
The small dark cedars that with cones of shade 
Did dot the clearing were as monks to me, 
In twos and groups assembling at the hour 
Of prayer. And as we entered now the wood, 
I thought to read on some huge bowlder's face, 
As on a cornerstone, in mossy runes: 
'Built by the Eternal ere the birth of time.' 
Through distant chantries like retiring choirs 
Trilled birds, or wakened echo's antiphon. 
A living gargoyle, mischievous and quaint, 
The squirrel peered from leaf and pillared tree; 
And ruddy fungus through the gloom burned faint 
As glimmering tapers round a shrine. And on, 
Beyond the columns and the tracery, 
A sheeted cataract fell, from which there came 
In solemn truth a voice behind the veil. 
That which methought it uttered was more true 
Than truly uttered; but I heard it thus, 
That forest Pythian: 'Child, the faith is here, 
More old than Rome's, more pure than Luther's. 



JORDAN FARMS 61 

Lo, 
Earth's mighty manhood soaring up in song; 
Not verse alone, but that for which all verse 
Is but the sermon, prayer, or choral stave, 
The creed itself, the mystery and the power, 
Unfailing comfort, consolation deep, 
The light, the hope, the God within the bread : 
The God of growth, whose creed is endless change 
Of every creed in light of what we learn, 
Who willed not that a spiderweb of words 
Should bind the Samson in our race, yet less 
That his blind force should pull all temples down ; 
Whose written word is this vast universe, 
From vellum scroll to earth's wide verdure, sea, 
Star-nursing night, child's face, and prophet's 

dream. 
In name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
Young, eager heart, ordained for aiding earth, 
Into the creed that was, is, and shall be 
Do I baptize thee man/ And on my brow 
The drops were sprinkled from the bounding 

foam. 
I know not what my bowed companion heard; 
But through the woodland hand in hand we went. 

"New years came following fast, with duties 
new, 
And hopes that drew me like ascending flame 



62 JORDAN FARMS 

Through magic books and haunted hearts of men, 
Till love at last, full rounding, claimed its own. 
My little maid before I knew laid by 
Youth's chrysalis and rose a woman soul, 
Tender and womanly, hallowing life for me. 
Then late in summer on an afternoon, 
Beside a roguish, dimpling, laughing brook 
I asked and won her pledge of wife. And there 
In love's first hour of full, unfolding speech 
We roamed together memory-haunted ways 
Of earlier hours where once we walked alone; 
Or through the unbounded future, broad and warm, 
Beheld our home's bright window star the nights 
To be. Then from a bough that earlier turned 
Than all the rest we tore the reddening leaves, 
And wound them gayly round each other's brows, 
And laughed; but underneath the ripple ran 
Our blending lives in full, harmonious flow. 

"Too beautiful it was there soon to leave, 
And long we stayed. Below us danced the brook 
That laughed and twinkled when my grandsire 

wooed ; 
And ever we heard the soft and dreamy wind 
Through the wild grape-vine and the plumy corn 
Bear scent of ripening ears and clusters, peace 
As old as Eshcol and Saturnian fields. 



JORDAN FARMS 63 

The sun went down; the clouds on peak and range 
Like vast, ethereal altars flamed to heaven; 
And toward man's temple of primordial joy 
Our hearts went up to love's Jerusalem. 

"Beneath that star that poured its melting 

mood 
Through darkened mind and iron hearts of old, 
I sought the one who mothering life so dear 
Henceforth might mother me. I heard her step 
With beating heart that wondered why it beat — 
She long had known, she loved me as a son — 
And faltering told her all, our promise made, 
My poverty but will to work and rise, 
The long years we must wait. 'Why wait?' she 

said; 
'The old grow feeble though you, the young, are 

strong; 
And death might come to us before the joy 
That hour would bring. Your wife has wealth for 

both. 
Why should I shame beneath my hoary hairs 
To tell the truth in ears I trust? Young man, 
I loved your cousin, all my days I did; 
Yet loved my sister too, was proud to see 
The man she chose through many a lonesome year 
Revere her memory. So her gentle ghost 
Walked evermore between my hopes and me. 
And once, by memories thrilled, we spoke of this, 



64 JORDAN FARMS 

Frankly, as friends of many a year might speak; 
But both, remembering that sweet, buried face, 
Grew dumb, and never mentioned love again. 
We could not marry; now our children can. 
We, gray-haired ghosts of long forgotten youth, 
Might at your bridal feel our lives fulfilled. 
Work hard, and play the man; but, sir, be sure 
False pride ill suits true love, and marry now/ 

"So that same autumn heard our wedding bells, 
That echoed through the ancient hills, as if 
Old loves awakening welcomed in the new. 
Through crowds our parents came to wish us joy. 
Her lips were smiling; tears were in her eyes. 
But he, who saw my bride beneath her veil 
So like the aunt he wedded long ago, 
Blest us with trembling voice. 'Who knows/ he 

said, 
'How long the blessings God allows may last? 
Turn not your back on love while love is here/ 
In sun and music and a world of flowers 
We parted. 'But we soon return,' my bride 
Whispered my cousin; 'you must share our home, 
And be my father. Promise/ And he did. 
Then out we drove. Beneath the maple tree, 
Whose earliest loosened leaves, green, gold, and 

red, 
Fell floating round, he stood and waved farewell; 



JORDAN FARMS 65 

And cheerily through the autumn air his voice 
Pursued us, 'Till we meet again, my children.' 

"We left him glad, came back and found him 
dead. 
May men lament for me as I for him. 
He made the most of what his fates had marred; 
God grant I mar not what he made of me." 



F. NUNC DIMITTIS— BEING WHAT I 

FOUND AMONG HENRY JORDAN'S 

PAPERS AND WHAT DREAMS 

I DREAMED OVER THEM 

This little volume, traced in woman's hand, 
With faded ink and ancient watermark, 
And withered roses laid between the leaves, 
In Henry's desk I found at Jordan Farms, 
Piled on with papers, creased and blurred and 

frayed 
From many a reading. Strange how it lay there, 
And no one saw but me. It is the diary 
Of Ellen Jordan, 'tis a woman's life. 
You read it not, for holy ground is this. 
But humbly here my spirit trod, and found 
The noble dream replaced by noble truth; 
The hope that died, the hope that lived and grew 
Beyond all hope; misgivings worn away; 
And faded violets of sweet bygone thought 
Enfolded here, as pure a shrine to love 
As famed Mahal's in India's mighty tomb. 

Here Henry's comment lines the closing page, 
Dated one evening in the month he died: 
"Late must we learn to know the hearts we love; 



JORDAN FARMS 67 

To bridge the darkened gulf of sex and blood, 
Across which lovers daily clasp their hands, 
And kiss, and comprehend not. Know me now, 
Pure bride, unveiled by time, more dear than she, 
That sweet, veiled stranger whom I wooed as you. 
Like night and day in twilight's golden fringe, 
One hour of mutual thought our days allowed; 
But many a sunny mood was blank to me, 
And through my night shone stars you never saw. 
Yet blest it was in that one twilight hour 
To walk and understand — before you died. 
We won much here, love; what we missed is 

yonder. 
We here saw darkly as through glass, but there 
See face to face." So wrote he; now he sees. 

Near this a letter from his cousin lay, 
The bridegroom's happy message, and his bride's, 
Read that same day. And down the margin ran 
A note in Henry's hand: "Spent half the night 
In praying God to bless their married life, 
And thinking of my own." At Jordan Farms, 
Alone at night before a crumbling fire, 
I held these documents of the dead, and thought. 

You may have seen in darkened windowpanes 
A lamp's reflected flame, and back of that 
Reflection on reflection, flame on flame 
In fading file, that, each a neighbor's ghost, 



68 JORDAN FARMS 

Build stairs through Nightland. So did dream on 

dream, 
And visions viewed by one in vision seen, 
Float up before me from the smoldering coals. 
I sitting there saw Henry sitting there 
Alone without me, gazing at the fire, 
And through his eyes seemed viewing what he saw. 

In far-off lands, by mountain-guarded lake, 
Or castled river, or gray citadel, 
Walked two young lovers. And the landscape 

shrank 
In flickering flames ; but those two faces loomed 
Fresh in the foreground with rejoicing eyes, 
And seemed to wave their hands toward one 

unseen. 
Then these gave way to scenes more dim and old, 
A time-worn farmhouse, trees, and clumps of 

flowers 
Our mothers loved, a form among the flowers, 
With gentle mien and garb of other days. 
The clock ticked loudly from the land of time, 
Unheard, unheeded on that timeless shore. 
Flames leapt and fell, and pictures went and came, 
But through them all that same sweet bygone face. 

Slowly around on hill and homestead fell 
The vast, dead silence of a world asleep. 
Loose clapboards rattled in the wind, and stars 



JORDAN FARMS 69 

From western trails looked in with dying beam. 
On fading fire and fading memories 
Night crept and slumber; and good angels watched 
Above the sleeper, waiting for the dawn. 



So ends the record that I wove with warp 
Of fact and woof of fancy; yet I trust, 
In closing here, that eyes look down well pleased 
From Heaven's immeasurable realm of peace. 
Last by God's Acre when the glorious west 
Renewed our faith in good Saint John, I came. 
Round Henry's headstone, bright with day's adieu, 
Husband and wife, that happy family stood 
Which, save for love and deeds of him below, 
Had never been, heads bowed in grateful prayer. 
And Wellman's grandchild, only ten months' old, 
Was dropping wildflowers on the sunlit grave. 

End 



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